by Karen Chance
“You are making no sense.” Marlowe sounded confused and resentful. “You do realize that?”
“Then tell your Lady this. The love of power destroyed my family once; I do not wish to see history repeat itself. I will serve her loyally until such a time as she moves against those I consider mine.”
“You want me to give an ultimatum to the consul?”
“No. Merely to request a concession. For an old and trusted ally.”
“There are those who would serve her without such concessions.”
“Yes. Sycophants are always easy to find. They are also easily swayed by the next power who promises them more. How many offers have I turned down to stay with her?” Mircea asked, suddenly angry. “Why this? Why now?”
“It’s Anthony,” Marlowe admitted, “at least in part. He has been whispering in her ear since he arrived, warning her that Louis-Cesare would add too much to your personal power base.”
“She must surely see why!”
“Of course, but his words reinforced her own concerns. This was… a test.”
“An unnecessary one.”
“Was it?” Marlowe’s dark eyes were serious. “You chose family over the needs of the Senate. Over her.”
“This would not have helped either, as I believe I made clear.”
“And now another member of your family has gone rogue. He must be brought in, Mircea. She cannot allow such a direct challenge to her authority to stand.”
“I am not hiding the man in my closet, Kit! I know no more of his whereabouts than you do.”
“And if you did?”
Mircea met his eyes steadily. “I abandoned a member of my family once, long ago. I swore then never to repeat the error.”
“Then I trust you are prepared for the consequences!” Marlowe snapped, and stormed out. The reporters tried to squeeze through the open door, but a nudge of power slammed it in their faces. I heard someone yelp.
“You can almost see the consul’s hand up Marlowe’s ass,” I said, blinking my eyes open. The room trembled a little at the corners, but it was better than it had been a minute ago. I decided that was good enough, and sat up.
“It may seem that way,” Mircea said, rising and crossing to the small bar in the corner. “In reality, it is more that they think alike and always have done.”
“You know he’s going off to report to her right now.”
“I doubt that will be necessary,” Mircea said wryly. “There are few rooms, if any, in this house that I would consider truly private.”
I assumed that was a warning, although I didn’t have any deep, dark secrets to spill. And if I did, I sure as hell wouldn’t be talking about them here. “He’s right, though. Risking yourself for me wasn’t smart.”
Mircea poured something that I really hoped was whiskey into a couple of glasses. “When one serves such a mistress, occasionally it is useful to make a show of force,” he said, handing me one. “Otherwise, she may forget which among her servants are courtiers and which are ciphers.”
“You took a hell of a risk for a reminder.”
Mircea joined me with his own drink. The sofa was right across from the dead guy; it almost looked like the three of us were having a quiet drink together. Very quiet, on his part.
“It would not have been, under normal circumstances,” he said. “She would not expect me to turn over a high-ranking family member to be slaughtered for a crime he did not commit.”
“It sounded to me like that’s exactly what she expects.”
“She is frightened. And when someone holds that much power, their fear can be dangerous. That is why I want you out of this, Dorina. There are creatures involved in this from whom I cannot protect you.”
I bit my lip on the knee-jerk retort that I didn’t need protection. Normally, it was true. But there weren’t too many things on Earth who could go up against the consul when she was in a mood. Not and live, anyway.
Which made me wonder why Mircea had done it.
I almost asked, but something stopped me. Probably the same thing that kept me from asking him about the vision I’d seen, about the mother I couldn’t remember. I wanted to know, and I didn’t. As long as I didn’t bring it up, didn’t mention it, that brief glimpse of her remained real and vivid in my memory, something I’d never had before. But if I caught him in a lie, if I found out that this was nothing more than another ploy to get me to do what he wanted, I’d lose it. I’d lose her.
Just like, if I probed too deeply into this new attitude of Mircea’s, I might find that it masked the same old schemes. Was this sudden concern because Louis-Cesare had shown some interest in me? Was it merely what Marlowe had said—a way to bind a powerful ally more closely? If so, I’d have thought that Mircea would be more encouraging of a relationship, instead of all but warning me off. Unless he thought that’s what I would think, in which case—
Damn it. I realized that I wanted it to be real, all of it, wanted him to have cared about her, wanted him to care about me. And I was so very afraid that he didn’t. It was easier not to ask, to let the possibility last a little longer, even if it meant not learning anything else.
God, I could be such a coward sometimes.
“You think the consul is afraid of you?” I asked instead.
“Perhaps, in part. It is a balancing act with which every sovereign has to deal; the more powerful a courtier, the more useful, but also the more dangerous. No one can sustain herself in authority by relying solely on yes men, but gather too many powerful, ambitious courtiers around…”
“And one day, one of them will replace you.”
It was strange, but I had never really thought about just how much power Mircea had. All senators seemed impossibly godlike, up there in the clouds somewhere, making decisions for us poor mortals. And compared to the vamp on the street, they were. But in fact, senators varied a lot in personal power and in the alliances each house was able to call on in an emergency.
And Mircea had always been very good at making alliances.
“I am not that one,” he said firmly. “Occasionally she needs to hear that.”
“And the other part?”
“The current situation has us all on edge. I cannot recall another time when so much has been in flux all at once. Anthony’s court, possibly about to face numerous challenges; Alejandro’s, weakened by years of misrule and neglect, about to topple; and our own Senate, devastated by the war, about to be rebuilt.”
“It might be rebuilt better.” I could certainly see room for improvement.
“Perhaps. But one thing is sure: it will be different. Loyalties will be tested. Age-old alliances will have to woo new members or they will not survive. And change is not something our people face with equanimity.”
“Hence the freak-out.”
“Yes.” There was a knock on the door, and a servant discreetly looked in. “The Circle is here,” Mircea said, rising. He looked at me, and his face went completely blank. “I meant to send this to you today,” he said, taking something out of his coat. “I cannot give you back your memories, Dorina. I can but give you mine.”
I didn’t understand that cryptic phrase, and had no time to ask him about it before the Circle’s people burst into the room and deluged him.
I found myself out in the hall, after getting elbowed out of the room by hungry journalists. It looked like the Circle had brought some of their own, along with medics—too late—and a couple old guys in suits.
I looked down at the small book Mircea had pressed into my palm. It had a leather cover that looked new, but what it was protecting wasn’t. There were a few dozen pages inside of good, thick paper that had aged to a deep gold color. I stared at them, uncomprehending, for a long moment.
Images covered the pages on both sides. Some were hasty sketches, done with a firm hand in dark ink, a few quick strokes picking out delicate features. Others were fully realized miniature paintings, the paper beneath them mottled with age, but the colors still a
s vibrant as the jewels that had once been crushed into their pigments. The subject of each was the same: a young dark-haired woman.
At first, I thought the images were of me, but I’d never worn those clothes, never posed for those sketches. And then I found one of her in front of a window, with her sleeves rolled up and her arms coated in flour, and my mind reeled. My fingers brushed the surface of the soapy old paper, tracing the raised edges of the ink in disbelief. These hadn’t been hastily thrown together in a few hours, as a prop to some devious scheme. It must have taken months, years, to do them all….
Suddenly, I couldn’t make anything else out. Everything was a bright, smeared blur, like trying to see something when it was held right up against my face. Then I looked back at Mircea and everything came into focus again.
He was staring at me over the heads of the milling mages, silently. He should have been rearranging those handsome features into a concerned mask to placate the Circle. But there was still no expression on his face, no emotion in those dark eyes.
Maybe he didn’t know how to do this, either, I thought blankly.
And then a phalanx of scowling war mages arrived, jostling me farther down the hall.
The leather coat-clad crew got one look at Lutkin and started fingering their weapons. Eyes darted around suspiciously, as if they expected something to jump out at them from the wall. Mircea was going to have fun trying to keep the peace, and that was on top of having to come up with some kind of defense for Louis-Cesare.
The rules of the vamp world weren’t as arbitrary as some people thought. Masters had life-or-death power over their own families, but screw with somebody else’s and there was hell to pay. And for better or worse, Louis-Cesare was attached to the powerful, dysfunctional, vindictive-as-hell Basarab line.
Even Anthony couldn’t order him to be enslaved or killed if there was reasonable doubt of his guilt; Mircea would see to that. But eloquence would get him only so far. He needed something to work with, and it was my job to get him that something whether he wanted me to or not. I just wasn’t sure how.
I carefully tucked the small book away, dodging more new arrivals. Nobody was smiling, and everyone seemed to feel that I was in the way. I was trying to figure out the shortest route to the front entrance when Marlowe sidled up and shoved a slip of paper into my hand.
“Don’t make me regret this,” he hissed.
I glanced down. Two addresses were scribbled over it in a bold hand. One was nearby, and looked like a house number, and one was an address in Manhattan. There were no names, but I didn’t really need any.
“You have got to be shitting me.”
“Mircea’s Achilles’ heel is his family,” Marlowe told me quietly. “Louis-Cesare must be found by tonight, with or without proof of his innocence, or I fear your father may put his own position in jeopardy attempting to save him. And the consul will not back him. Do you understand?”
“I understand that you want me to drag Louis-Cesare back here to be butchered. He’s not going to take Anthony’s deal, Marlowe.”
“I know that! But if he is here we can stall while we work to find evidence to clear him. The trial could drag on for days. But if he is absent again, they’ll declare him an outlaw and issue a death warrant. Tonight.”
“Why trust me with this?”
“I have to operate within certain guidelines, at least where people at this level are concerned. You do not. And there is no time to finesse anything. We must shake something loose. Now.”
There was nothing I could safely say in the consul’s territory, so I didn’t say anything. I hit the door and got to shaking.
CHAPTER 32
Outside, heat shimmered off the drive and the sea of white plastic tents. I wished I’d brought a pair of sunglasses, but no such luck. So I bought one from a vendor who was happy to get the business now that half his customers had run off.
Or, at least, they were trying to. There was a backlog of cars still attempting to exit the grounds, clogging air and roadside alike. I decided to leave the Camaro where it was and head off to my first appointment on foot.
Slinking along behind me, carefully muffled up against the glaring sun, were two very unhappy vampires. I assumed they were Marlowe’s, since they made no attempt to attack me, but I didn’t know for sure. They wouldn’t introduce themselves or so much as deign to notice my existence. But when I moved, so did they.
Two miles and about a ton of sweat later, I found myself staring up at a rambling mansion that rivaled the consul’s in size, although not in elegance. But then, it was just a rental. I showed Claire’s note at the door, and was left to cool my heels for half an hour in the vast wood-paneled foyer.
Of course, there was no air-conditioning. I was certain the home came equipped, but vamps don’t need it. They usually only turn it on when they have humans around they want to impress, and apparently, I didn’t qualify.
Finally, I was shown into a sitting room. Or, at least, that was what I assume it had been before it had been draped with red silk and lined with braziers. The braziers were lit and it was hot as hell, but that wasn’t why I staggered and almost fell. The power in the room was like a punch to the gut. It felt something like walking through the consul’s front door, only most of it was radiating off the tiny, little woman on the big, ugly throne.
When I was born, the average height for a guy had been five foot four, so I’d been considered pretty tall for a woman. Then times had changed, diets had improved and I’d ended up shopping in the petite section. But one look at Ming-de, and I decided maybe to hold off on the complaints for a while. If she’d been shopping at the local mall, she’d have had to go to the kiddie store.
Not that she appeared to have that problem. Her bright yellow silk robes were embroidered within an inch of their lives with a glittering menagerie of fantastic beasts. She wore a headdress with pearls as big as cherries and a lot of gold tassels that shimmered whenever she moved. And her little feet, maybe all of three inches long, were encased in lotus shoes so crusted with embroidery that the fabric couldn’t even be seen.
The tiny useless feet were tenderly propped on a tufted stool, with a large guard kneeling on either side. Why, I don’t know. It wasn’t like she needed the help.
I finally scraped myself off the floor and staggered to the bottom of the set of stairs leading up to the dais on which the monster throne squatted. It had gilt mythical beasts writhing all over it or, hell, I don’t know. They might have been solid gold. It didn’t look like Ming-de was hard up. It was backed by a couple of tall, similarly decorated screens so that the whole end of the room was an explosion of gold.
I stood there in my sweaty T-shirt, feeling a little inadequate.
And then she poked a head on a stick out at me, and I cheered up. Mine was bigger.
The tiny shrunken head had been Ming-de’s English translator for a few hundred years, since she would be damned if she was going to learn the barbarian tongue herself. Rumor was that she’d cut it off some English sea captain back in the day, although after the shrinkage and subsequent wear, it was a little hard to tell. It looked dusty.
“Please tell her serene highness that I come as a representative of a princess of the fey,” I instructed, glad to have found a way to communicate.
“She knows that,” the tiny head informed me grouchily. It was about the size of a crab apple, and appeared to have a personality to match. “You sent in a note, didn’t you?”
“Tell her I’m here to inquire about a missing item of fey property.”
“She knows that, too. She said to inform you that she purchased it in good faith and with the understanding that it was the property of the fey selling it. She would return it to the princess, but as she never received it, it’s a moot point. Have a nice day.”
“Please tell her serene highness that the princess appreciates her cooperation. She is trying to avoid a possibly ugly encounter when her family arrives tomorrow. Were she to receive the stone
back before then, the whole thing could be forgotten. Otherwise…”
“Otherwise what?”
“It will be out of the princess’s hands. Her family will take over the hunt for the stone. And they may wonder how someone as astute as the empress could be taken in by such a fraud. They may also wonder why she has yet to retaliate against anyone for the duplicity.”
“She hadn’t paid for it,” Crabby said, frowning. “It disappeared before it could be authenticated, and the transfer of funds was never made. She lost nothing.”
“She lost a valuable object that she had every reason to assume was rightfully hers. She lost face in front of the other bidders, most of whom now know that the stone is missing. She also lost the advantage it would have given her at tonight’s challenge.”
“You are accusing the empress of cheating?” The little thing looked outraged. He had yet to communicate a damn thing to the empress, whose beautiful face was as serene as ever. But her long fingernail guards were going clack, clack, clack on the arms of her throne.
I was starting to think that “translator” might not be quite the right word.
“I am merely pointing out what the fey might think,” I said, eyeing him suspiciously. “If the stone is returned to her before the challenge tonight, everything can be forgotten.”
“And now you accuse her of what? Stealing her own property?”
“It was not her property; it was fey property. And your lady is wise. Perhaps she had discovered this and realized that the only way she could retain the stone was to—”
I didn’t get any further, but I did discover what the two guards were for. A few seconds later, my butt hit the dirt in front of the elegant circular driveway. Frick and Frack were waiting just outside the gate, huddled in the inadequate shade of a small maple. They weren’t bothering to conceal themselves anymore, I guess because I’d already spotted them. They took in my disheveled appearance and grinned.
I grinned back and glanced up at the blazing sun. “I guess we better get started. It’s a three-mile hike back to the car.”